


Rising Damp

by mad_martha



Series: The Lodger Series [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Domestic, Gen, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco learns something new about Phoenix Lodge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rising Damp

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet dates back to July 2007, a summer of great flooding in parts of the UK, so I suppose a flood-fic of some kind was inevitable, but for some reason I never managed a full-scale story out of this. It also harks back to a couple of ideas I had in a long-abandoned Lodger sequel (which long-term readers of my fic will recall). If I had any idea of a plot when I was writing it I've long since forgotten what that was, and all I have is a vague recollection of Harry and Draco being trapped on the upper storey of the house, telling each other stories from the war to pass the time. That would explain the original classification in my files, which was 'drama', but since I'm posting this as an undramatic cookie I've changed it to 'domestic' instead.

"Marvellous," Draco muttered, peering out of the sitting room window at the vista of dripping plants and waterlogged lawn that was Phoenix Lodge's garden.  _Eight weeks of summer holiday - eight weeks of relaxation and no brats - and what do I get?  Sunshine?  Hot sun?  Lazy days in a garden hammock with cold drinks and long novels?  No.  I get a re-enactment of the Great Deluge, minus the ark and animals._

He dug his hands into his jeans pockets and hunched his shoulders.  It wasn't actually raining right at that moment but judging by all the weather forecasts on WWN, plus the not-inconsiderable grey cloud cover over the local area, a lot more was on the way soon.

Harry splashed past the sitting room window.  He was wearing Wellington boots and carrying a small shovel and an armful of hemp sacks.

"What are you up to now, Harry Potter?" Draco mused.  Unaware of him, Harry disappeared around the corner of the house.

Draco sauntered into the kitchen and out to the back door.  When he opened it, he found Harry standing next to a pile of sand.  The shovel was busily filling the sacks while Harry stood over the sand, frowning and flicking his wand in a smooth, repetitive pattern.  The pile of sand doubled in size, then doubled again.  And again.

"I'm sure a beach would be an excellent addition to the garden, but is this really the weather for it?" Draco drawled, although he was genuinely puzzled by his partner's actions.

Harry smiled, but he never took his eyes off his growing pile of sand.  "If you want to help, there's another shovel and some more sacks in the greenhouse," he said distractedly.  "We're going to need a lot more sandbags."

Draco's brows drew together.  "Why _are_ you filling sacks with sand?  Am I missing something?"

Harry looked up.  "We live in the middle of Somerset, Draco.  In case you hadn't noticed, it's rather flat around here."

"So?"

" _So_ ... if you get a lot of rain here, it starts to hang around.  It's not the worst area in Britain for flooding, but it's happened here once or twice before.  I recognise the signs."  Harry gestured to the path in front of the sitting room windows.  "There's a couple of inches of water there now and it's not draining away.  If we get more rain later it'll start coming into the house, so we need sandbags to hold off the worst."

Draco stared at him blankly for a moment.  "So use wards."

"Doesn't work."  Harry smiled at his expression.  "You can't ward everything tightly enough.  There are watertight wards on the patio windows and cellar, but you can never ward enough to keep it all out.  Water's like that.  Hence the sandbags.  When I've done this, I'll start moving stuff from the ground floor - unless you want to get started?"

"You can't be serious."

"Deadly, I promise."  Harry pushed his hair out of his eyes.  "During the war Voldemort had a witch among the Death Eaters who had a gift with the weather.  We had six months of non-stop rain here - he didn't know exactly where we were, but he knew the general location and he made it as miserable for us as possible."  He smiled at Draco.  "I was nearly climbing the walls at one point, and you have no idea what being stuck in the house in bad weather was like for Sirius.  We were doing hours of duelling practice a day just to distract him.  He hated being cooped up after Azkaban."

"The house is going to flood?"  Draco stared at the spreading puddles with distaste.

"Not much, but it won't be very pleasant if we don't get everything moved."

"How long will this go on for?"

"For as long as the rain does, probably."  Harry gave him an amused look.  "So what would you prefer to do - roll carpets or fill sacks?"

 

~~~

 

"Sirius was pretty pissed off the first time the house flooded," Harry commented, as the two of them waved wands over the carpets and rugs.  "He wasn't too impressed at having to wear wellies just to make a cup of tea."

"I hate to break this to you, but I won't be very impressed either," Draco said, rather grumpily.  "Where are you going to put all this stuff?"

"That's the good part.  Phoenix Lodge was headquarters, remember - there was never fewer than six people living here at a time at the height of the war and we couldn't work easily with the ground floor under a couple of inches of water.  So we adapted the house."

"I've seen your war room," Draco remarked, referring to a hidden room off the study that was filled with everything from maps and battle plans left over from the war to the contents of Professor Dumbledore's private library.  It was sealed to everyone but Harry and Fawkes the Phoenix these days, although recently he'd talked about giving Draco and Ron Weasley access in case of emergencies, as it was a good secure hiding place for both objects and people.

"It's a similar sort of thing," Harry said.  "I'll show you in a minute.  Here - let's send these upstairs." 

Draco flicked his wand at the rolled carpets and sent them trooping out of the hallway and up the stairs.  "What about the furniture?"

"Upend the kitchen and dining room chairs on the tables - it's not vital, but it saves time."  Harry was already stacking the chairs on the kitchen table.  "We'll need to put Cushioning Charms on the bookcases and dressers too - any furniture with loose objects on it, including the grandfather clock in the hall.  The pictures can stay put though."

"What about the wood parquet in the hallway?  Won't it be ruined?"

"No.  Hermione and Luna spent a whole afternoon Imperviusing each tile and securing them with Permanent Sticking Charms.  It'll get wet but the water won't actually soak into the wood, and all we'll need to do is make sure it's fully dry before re-polishing it."

"I think I'm impressed."

Harry flashed him a grin.  "That's just the small details!  You'll love the rest of the solution Remus and Sirius came up with."

It took nearly an hour to make sure everything was secure.  Then Harry went back into the kitchen and tapped his wand on a spot on the wall where a small, square, unglazed earthenware decal was affixed.  There was one of these in each room, each with a goblin rune carved into it; Draco had noticed them before but it had never occurred to him to ask what they were.  Wizard houses were always full of oddities and one learned from an early age not to take much notice.

" _Levito omnis_ ," Harry said firmly.

The kitchen furniture - table, chairs, cooking range, refrigerator and welsh dresser - trembled, made a faint scraping sound ... and began to levitate upwards, passing smoothly through the ceiling.  A rattling sound in the pantry and laundry room indicated that the contents there had shifted too.

"You store everything in the bedrooms?" Draco demanded.  It was going to be an uncomfortable few days if that was the case.

Harry only smiled and walked through to the dining room to repeat the process.  It didn't take long, although there was more noise as the entire contents of the study moved.

"What about the hidden room?" Draco asked finally.

"Flooding's never a problem with that room."  Harry was checking everywhere carefully to make sure nothing was left that could be damaged.  "I don't fully understand the magical theory behind it, but my understanding is that although it _seems_ to be just behind that wall there, in physical terms it's actually somewhere under the garden most of the time.  And I know that doesn't sound like a recipe for a dry room, but it works - we never had a flooding problem with it.  I'm just glad I _don't_ have to move everything in there, to be honest."

"All right.  So where does it all go?"

Harry grinned at him.  "Follow me."

 

~~~

 

"I refuse to sleep in a room with a refrigerator in it," Draco said as they climbed the stairs.  He was aware that he sounded peevish, but he genuinely felt that he couldn't face it.  "I've done that before.  They make strange noises in the middle of the night.  And anyway, it's not right - a man shouldn't have to sleep in the same room as tomorrow's lunch."

"You won't be sleeping with the fridge," Harry said, amused.

He opened the door into the first bedroom (Draco's original room before he moved in with Harry) and walked inside; Draco stopped in the doorway and peered in suspiciously.

No kitchenware.

"Where did it all go?" he demanded.

Harry walked across the room.  To the side of the bed was a large floor-length picture frame containing an antique length of tapestry that depicted a herd of centaurs hunting.  He tapped on the side of the frame with his wand and it seemed to flip sideways.  When it flipped back again it was no longer a framed tapestry but a door.  Then Draco understood.

"It's another hidden room?"

"There are more in this house than you'd think," Harry said.  He turned the handle and the door swung open to reveal all the kitchen furniture in exactly the same places as they'd been downstairs.  The only difference was a tough-looking beige carpet covering the floor and a window in the wrong wall, while on the opposite side of the room was a door with a little plaque on it saying _Laundry/Larder_.

"And the furniture from the other rooms is all in hidden rooms like this?" Draco asked, impressed in spite of himself.

"Yes, although the others are all quite small so it's much more crowded.  I'll show you in a minute.  Sirius made sure this one was roughly the same size as the kitchen because we'd need to use it.  But we added the extra space everywhere because on a couple of occasions we had people staying here who were on the run.  They didn't really need to be hidden, mind you, but a lot of them felt safer that way."

"I know how they felt," Draco muttered.

"It was a bit like an army training camp once or twice," Harry remarked.  He shut the door again.  "Let's get the sandbags in place downstairs, and then I fancy some tea."

They had barely started placing the sandbags when the rain started again.  It was heavy and soon began to lash the house and garden, rattling on the clay roof tiles and making it hard to see out of the windows.

"Look," Harry said, pointing out of the patio doors at one point.  Draco squinted and saw that the water level on the path outside was already starting to rise.  They piled bags on both sides of the long windows and doors, getting thoroughly drenched in the process, and warded everything for good measure.  Then they sploshed back inside rather grimly to get changed.

The weather reports on WWN a little later were not encouraging.

"Some summer holiday this is," Draco said glumly.

"Yeah."  Harry was peering out of their bedroom window.  "The tomatoes I planted out are all going to get blight at this rate.  And I don't think those pepper plants are planning to do anything either."

Draco rolled his eyes.  "Devastating!"

Harry glanced over his shoulder at him, and grinned.  "You'll think so when there's no tomato and pepper chutney to have with your cold meat at Christmas!"

"Oh."  He was rather disconcerted by this.  "Is that where it comes from?"

It was Harry's turn to roll his eyes.  "You're like one of those city kids who doesn't realise that milk comes from a cow," he remarked.  " _Yes,_ tomato and pepper chutney is made with real tomatoes and peppers.  And funnily enough, I'm the one who makes it - with tomatoes and peppers that I grow in the garden.  When it's not waterlogged, that is."

"So we'll have to buy it instead.  It's a hardship, but I suppose I'll survive just this once.  See that it doesn't happen again, though."

 

 **  
_~ finis ~_   
**


End file.
